Politicization of science

The politicization of science is the manipulation of science for political gain. It occurs when government, business, or advocacy groups use legal or economic pressure to influence the findings of scientific research or the way it is disseminated, reported or interpreted. The politicization of science may also negatively affect academic and scientific freedom. Historically, groups have conducted various campaigns to promote their interests in defiance of scientific consensus, and in an effort to manipulate public policy.[1][2][3]

Contents

Overview1

Historical examples2

Soviet Union2.1

Tobacco and cancer2.2

Eugenics2.3

Recent examples3

George W. Bush administration3.1

Surgeon General3.1.1

Food and Drug Administration3.1.2

United States Department of the Interior3.1.3

Intelligent design3.2

Global warming3.3

Waxman report3.4

Abortion–breast cancer hypothesis3.5

US House of Representatives Science Oversight and Investigation subcommittee4

Dedications and holidays5

Scholarly studies of the politics of science6

See also7

References8

External links9

Further reading10

Overview

Researcher William R. Freudenburg and colleagues have noted that where decisions and action are required, science can offer valuable degrees of certainty, however, it can never offer a guarantee.[4] Chris Mooney has claimed these tactics are used to gain more attention for views that have been undermined by scientific evidence. In his view, the media ends up in a misguided pursuit of "balance" which results in undue weight in reporting. As examples, Mooney offers the Teach the Controversy campaign that seeks to cast doubt on some aspects of evolutionary explanations, and other campaigns that seek to cast doubt on certain aspects of anthropogenic climate change.[6]

William R. Freudenburg and colleagues have written about this rhetorical technique, and state that this is an attempt to shift the burden of proof in an argument.[4]Cigarette lobbyists combating laws that would control smoking via trivializing evidence as uncertain, is offered as an example of a SCAM (Scientific Certainty Argumentation Method). They maintain that what is needed is a balanced approach that carefully considers the risks of both Type 1 and Type 2 errors in a situation while noting that scientific conclusions are always tentative. The authors conclude that politicians and lobby groups are too often able to make "successful efforts to argue for full 'scientific certainty' before a regulation can be said to be 'justified' — and that, in short, is a SCAM."[4]

Hank Campbell and microbiologist Alex Berezow have described "feel-good fallacies" used in politics, where politicians frame their positions in a way that makes people feel good about supporting certain policies even when scientific evidence shows there is no need to worry or there is no need for dramatic change on current programs. They have claimed that progressives have had these kinds of issues with policies involving genetically modified foods, vaccination, overpopulation, use of animals in research, nuclear energy, and other topics.[7][8]

Tobacco and cancer

A cigarette carton warns about the health risks of smoking. Public awareness was delayed by a SCAM (Scientific Certainty Argumentation Method).[4]

By the mid-1950s there was a scientific consensus that smoking promotes lung cancer, but the [5] [11]

Eugenics

Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler was well known for eugenics programs which attempted to maintain a "pure" German race through a series of programs that ran under the banner of Racial Hygiene. The Nazis manipulated scientific research in Germany, by forcing some scholars to emigrate, and by allocating funding for research based on ideological rather than scientific merit.[12]

In the early 20th century, Eugenics enjoyed substantial international support, from leading politicians and scientists. The First International Congress of Eugenics in 1912 was supported by many prominent persons, including: its president Leonard Darwin, the son of Charles Darwin; honorary vice-president Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty and future Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; Auguste Forel, famous Swiss pathologist; Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone; among other prominent people.[13]

The level of support for Eugenics research by the Nazis prompted an American Eugenics advocate to seek an expansion of the American program, with the complaint that "the Germans are beating us at our own game".[14]

There was a strong connection between American and Nazi Eugenics research. Nazis based their Eugenics program on the United States' programs of forced sterilization, especially on the eugenics laws that had been enacted in California.[15]

Recent examples

George W. Bush administration

In 2004, The [16]

Also in 2004, the scientific advocacy group Union of Concerned Scientists issued a report, Scientific Integrity in Policymaking: An Investigation into the Bush Administration's Misuse of Science[17][18] which charged the following:

"A growing number of scientists, policy makers, and technical specialists both inside and outside the government allege that the current Bush administration has suppressed or distorted the scientific analyses of federal agencies to bring these results in line with administration policy. In addition, these experts contend that irregularities in the appointment of scientific advisors and advisory panels are threatening to upset the legally mandated balance of these bodies."

"When scientific knowledge has been found to be in conflict with its political goals, the administration has often manipulated the process through which science enters into its decisions. This has been done by placing people who are professionally unqualified or who have clear conflicts of interest in official posts and on scientific advisory committees; by disbanding existing advisory committees; by censoring and suppressing reports by the government’s own scientists; and by simply not seeking independent scientific advice. Other administrations have, on occasion, engaged in such practices, but not so systematically nor on so wide a front. Furthermore, in advocating policies that are not scientifically sound, the administration has sometimes misrepresented scientific knowledge and misled the public about the implications of its policies."

The same year, Francesca Grifo, executive director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' Scientific Integrity Program, stated "We have reports that stay in draft form and don't get out to the public. We have reports that are changed. We have reports that are ignored and overwritten."[20]

In response to criticisms, President Bush in 2006 unveiled a campaign in his State of the Union Address to promote scientific research and education to ensure American competitiveness in the world, vowing to "double the federal commitment to the most critical basic research programs in the physical sciences over the next 10 years."

Surgeon General

Dr. embryonic stem cell research.[21][22]

"Anything that doesn't fit into the political appointees' ideological, theological or political agenda is often ignored, marginalized or simply buried," Carmona testified.[23]

Although he did not make personal accusations, the Washington Post reported on July 29 that the official who blocked at least one of Carmona's reports was William R. Steiger.[24]

Food and Drug Administration

In July 2006 the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released survey results that demonstrate pervasive political influence of science at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).[25] Of the 997 FDA scientists who responded to the survey, nearly one fifth (18.4 percent) said that they "have been asked, for non-scientific reasons, to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information or their conclusions in a FDA scientific document." This is the third survey Union of Concerned Scientists has conducted to examine inappropriate interference with science at federal agencies.

The Department of Health and Human Services also conducted a survey addressing the same topic which generated similar findings.[26] According to USA Today, a survey of Food and Drug Administration scientists by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and the Union of Concerned Scientists found that many scientists have been pressured to approve or reject new drugs despite their scientific findings concerns.[27] In July 2006, the Union of Concerned Scientists released survey results that they said "demonstrate pervasive political influence of science" at the Food and Drug Administration.[28][29]

United States Department of the Interior

On May 1, 2007, deputy assistant secretary at the United States Department of the InteriorJulie MacDonald resigned after the Interior Department Inspector General, Honorable Earl E. Devaney, reported that MacDonald broke federal rules by giving non-public, internal government documents to oil industry and property rights groups, and manipulated scientific findings to favor Bush policy goals and assist land developers.[30] On November 29, 2007, another report by Devaney found that MacDonald could have also benefitted financially from a decision she was involved with to remove the Sacramento splittail fish from the federal endangered species list.[31]

MacDonald's conduct violated the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) under 5 C.F.R. § 2635.703, Use of nonpublic information, and 5 C.F.R. § 2635.101, Basic obligation of public service.[32] MacDonald resigned a week before a House congressional oversight committee was to hold a hearing on accusations that she had "violated the Endangered Species Act, censored science and mistreated staff of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service."[33]

That all forms of life on Earth are related by common descent with modification is one of the most reliable and empirically tested theories in science.[35] Accordingly, any controversial aspects of evolution are a matter of religion and politics, not science.[2][36] The 2005 ruling in the Dover trial, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, where the claims of intelligent design proponents were considered by a United States federal court concluded that intelligent design is not science, that it "cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents", and concluded that the school district's promotion of it therefore violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.[37]

A 2006 article in scientific journal Science, said the reason that among the thirty-four developed countries surveyed, the U.S. ranks second from last in the number of adults who accept the theory of evolution: "The acceptance of evolution is lower in the United States than in Japan or Europe, largely because of widespread fundamentalism and the politicization of science in the United States."[38]

Global warming

Both mainstream climatologists and their critics have accused each other of politicizing the science behind climate change. There is a strong scientific consensus that global surface temperatures have increased in recent decades and that the trend is caused primarily by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases.[39][40][41]

In 1991, a US corporate coalition including the Information Council on the Environment" (ICE). ICE launched a $500,000 advertising campaign to, in ICE's own words, "reposition global warming as theory (not fact)." Critics of industry groups have charged that the claims about a global warming controversy are part of a deliberate effort to reduce the impact any international treaty, such as the Kyoto Protocol, might have on their business interests.[42]

In June 2005, John Vidal, environment editor of The Guardian, asserted the existence of US State Department papers showing that the Bush administration thanked Exxon executives for the company's "active involvement" in helping to determine climate change policy, including the US stance on Kyoto. Input from the industry advocacy group Global Climate Coalition was also a factor.[43]

^"That this controversy is one largely manufactured by the proponents of creationism and intelligent design may not matter, and as long as the controversy is taught in classes on current affairs, politics, or religion, and not in science classes, neither scientists nor citizens should be concerned." Intelligent Judging — Evolution in the Classroom and the Courtroom George J. Annas, New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 354:2277-2281 May 25, 2006

^The full report in PDF format is available from http://oversight.house.gov/features/politics_and_science/pdfs/pdf_politics_and_science_rep.pdf

^Russo J, Russo I (1980). "Susceptibility of the mammary gland to carcinogenesis. II. Pregnancy interruption as a risk factor in tumor incidence". Am J Pathol100 (2): 505–506. "In contrast, abortion is associated with increased risk of carcinomas of the breast. The explanation for these epidemiological findings is not known, but the parallelism between the DMBA-induced rat mammary carcinoma model and the human situation is striking. [...] Abortion would interrupt this process, leaving in the gland undifferentiated structures like those observed in the rat mammary gland, which could render the gland again susceptible to carcinogenesis."

^"WHO - Induced abortion does not increase breast cancer risk". who.int. Archived from the original on 2007-12-14. Retrieved 2007-12-24.

^"The Care of Women Requesting Induced Abortion" (PDF). Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. p. 43. Archived from the original on 2008-06-27. Retrieved 2008-06-29.

^"Politics & Science - Investigating the State of Science Under the Bush Administration". oversight.house.gov. Archived from the original on 2008-03-27. Retrieved 2008-04-14.

^ abJasen, P (2005). "Breast cancer and the politics of abortion in the United States". Med Hist49 (2): 423–44.

^"Politics & Science - Investigating the State of Science Under the Bush Administration". oversight.house.gov. Retrieved 2007-11-04.

^"The Subcommittee handles investigative and oversight activities on matters covering the entire jurisdiction of the Committee on Science and Technology. This Subcommittee is new for the 110th Congress." Subcommittees, Committee on Science and Technology

See also

The politicization of science is a subset of a broader topic, the politics of science, which has been studied by scholars in a variety of fields, including most notably Science and Technology Studies; history of science; political science; and the sociology of science, knowledge, and technology. Increasingly in recent decades, these fields have examined the process through which science and technology are shaped. Some of the scholarly work in this area is reviewed in The Handbook of Science & Technology Studies (1995, 2008), a collection of literature reviews published by the Society for Social Studies of Science.[62][63] There is an annual award for books relevant to the politics of science given by the Society for Social Studies of Science called the Rachel Carson Prize.

Dedications and holidays

look into...scientific integrity issues under the Bush Administration. There have been lots of reports in the press of manipulating science to support policy, rigging advisory panels, and suppressing research by federal employees or with federal dollars. I've written about that here before, and you interviewed me a year ago about the manipulation of science. In addition to the published reports, the committee staff has been collecting accounts, some confidential, of interference by political appointees. I hope that more folks will come forward now that Democrats are in the majority and we show we're really going to pursue the issue.[60]

US House of Representatives Science Oversight and Investigation subcommittee

[58] despite the NCI's scientifically-based assessment to the contrary.[57]
The most notable example of the politicization of this topic was the modification of the

The abortion-breast cancer hypothesis is the belief that induced abortions increase the risk of developing breast cancer.[52] This belief is in contrast to the scientific consensus that there is no evidence suggesting that abortions can cause breast cancer.[53][54][55] Despite the scientific community rejecting the hypothesis, many pro-life advocates continue to argue that a link between abortions and breast cancer exists, in an effort to influence public policy and opinion to further restrict abortions and discourage women from having abortions.[56] While historically a controversial hypothesis, the debate now is almost entirely political rather than scientific.[56]

In August 2003, sex education. The report accuses the administration of modifying performance measures for abstinence-based programs to make them look more effective. The report also found that the Bush administration had appointed Dr. Joseph McIlhaney, a prominent advocate of abstinence-only program, to the Advisory Committee to the director of the Centers for Disease Control. According to the report, information about comprehensive sex education was removed from the CDC's website.

Waxman report

[48]
In December 2007, the

[46]

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